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What constitutes a musical score ?


molly townsend

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Hi, I have been composing music via cakewalk for  20+ years but I can’t read/write music, I work exclusively with the piano roll and my ears.

I have  written  a lot in the style of musical theatre and have been involved in some original amateur productions.

One of our plays is receiving some interest from a semi professional drama company. And they are asking, not only for a CD of songs but also for a musical score.

Now, I know that you can print from cakewalk  but I also know that you have to tell it what key the project is in - I don’t know how to do that as I don’t understand sheet music.  So I wondered is someone could give me some pointers please?

Also, can someone tell me what constitutes a musical score.  i.e. is it every instrument or merely the melody and chords?

I’m grateful for all comments and advice thank you.

Edited by molly townsend
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A score can mean many different things based on what they are actually asking for. In many cases people use score/lead sheet interchangeably, meaning they only want the tempo, harmony and melody. Think of Real Book for example.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Myfunnyvalentine.jpg/330px-Myfunnyvalentine.jpg

In this case if its a theatre and they plan to play your music with the act, I would assume they want the scores for all the intrsuments, if they want to play it as you wrote it on the CD that is? 

In that case it would mean writing out the melody, tempo and key for all the instruments with rests and other articulation info like creasendos etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheet_music#/media/File:Der_100._Psalm_Max_Reger.jpg

 

Cakewalk is really not good at producing a leadsheet or a full score imo. Unless everything is steprecorded the notes will 100% be wrong and impossible to recreate by a musician. At least that is my experience.  (which i why I always beg for a new staff implementation :)

I would ask them about their expectations to avoid unnecessary work

 

Edited by Tobias
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Scores for musicals typically come in two flavours, a full score (with all the orchestral instruments and vocals), and a vocal score which just has a piano part with vocals.

There can then be a "set of parts" which is each instrument's individual notes. all collected together. Oboe, cor anglais, flute, bassoon, ... and so on down to double bass.

If you're writing for transposing instruments like Bb clarinet, or French Horn (in F) the notes will need transposing for the players.

But I do say typically. If you take a look here https://imslp.org/wiki/The_Mikado_(Sullivan%2C_Arthur) you will see under the various tabs, full score, vocal score and parts. It's old fashioned, so don't worry about that, but imagine that properly typeset.

You should be able to import your MIDI file (if you have one) into an application like MuseScore (a freebie) which makes a reasonable job, but almost certainly will need tidying quite a bit, as Tobias has explained. I use Finale 26.

JohnG.

Edited by JohnG
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Providing the definition is probably much easier than actually getting one out of Cakewalk. Like it was mentioned above, you will most likely need to import your MIDI to another program suited for the task.

https://www.audioenglish.org/dictionary/musical_score.htm

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Dictionary entry overview: What does musical score mean?

• MUSICAL SCORE (noun)
  The noun MUSICAL SCORE has 1 sense:

1. a written form of a musical composition; parts for different instruments appear on separate staves on large pages

 

Edited by abacab
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Musescore is a free score/notation program. You can import your music into it and create the score there. If you have no knowledge of how to do this, some study is in order. you will need to learn the basics of musical notation. The names of the notes, how they relate to the keyboard; note values or lengths (whole note, half note etc). Just learning that stuff will get you a long way toward the goal. Learning to read music is much easier than it seems. It's not rocket science, anyone can do it. Easily.

Edited by mdiemer
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You will not be able to use MuseScore, nor Sibelius, for what you are wishing to accomplish.  Absolutely not.  You have to use one of the Finale' products.

Read what I wrote here, and understand, and you won't waste days or weeks on being frustrated and having accomplished nothing.
 

And also read Starship Krupa's response to my post on that page, who will corroborate what I wrote.
 

Edited by Toddskins
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Finale always seems to get a bad rap. I think because it has a steep learning curve for advanced notation. But Finale for the printed page is excellent. Glad I brought it way back when. I never updated at each release. Usually skipped one or two and got the upgrade on sale price.

 

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